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Warsaw’s Leafy, Modernist Charm

The Saska Kepa district of Warsaw, which features many buildings that survived Word War II.Credit
Czarek Sokolowski/Associated Press

WARSAW — In 2008, when construction began on the Polish National Stadium along the River Vistula, residents of the nearby Saska Kepa neighborhood were worried.

The stadium was to be used for the national soccer team’s matches, as well as the finals of the Euro 2012 championship. And it was sure to bring noisy crowds to this quiet section of Warsaw, where about 32,000 of the 1.7 million people in the capital live.

But Ewa Visan, who lives in Saska Kepa, says the expected problems never materialized. In fact, “the city authorities fixed the streets and put in some new sidewalks and every time a big match is played they close off Ulica Francuska so it doesn’t get congested,” she said, referring to the area’s main street. “It’s also nice that people are coming here from the other side of the river because, in the past, it has been seen by some as akin to going abroad.”

Architecture buffs, however, often would venture across to the Vistula’s right bank to walk through the leafy neighborhood and admire its low-rise housing of plaster-covered brick or concrete, including some attractive Modernist constructions from the 1920s and 1930s that escaped damage in World War II.

One such building is a colorful four-level apartment block on Ulica Lipska that has a slightly maritime feel to its design. The building’s light yellow facade is highlighted by the bright yellow railings on its curved, wave-like balconies, and the stairwell set back from the street has porthole-style windows.

Mrs. Visan grew up in Saska Kepa and then lived for several years in the more populated and more urban part of the Polish capital, on the Vistula’s left bank. But she recently returned to the neighborhood with her husband and two young daughters. “It’s wonderful for families and has everything within walking distance, like in a small town,” she said.

In general, neighborhoods on the right bank have less expensive housing than the city center. The real estate agency Knight Frank says that what it calls the “upper standard” properties of Praga Poludnie, a city district that includes Saska Kepa, now are selling for an average of 8,900 zloty, or $2,872, per square meter. In comparison, such properties in the left bank’s Mokotow district average 9,700 zloty per square meter.

But it is Saska Kepa that is credited with keeping the district’s prices as high as they are. And its appealing streets and family-style housing have produced a gentrification that continues to increase demand.

At Dom Pod Klonem, a new six-apartment development whose name translates to Maple Tree House, there is only one unit left to sell. The apartment, on the second level, has an open-plan living room and kitchen area, two bedrooms and two bathrooms in its 107 square meters, or 1,152 square feet. It comes with one parking space in the building’s garage. The asking price is 1,775,000 zloty, which includes sales tax, as is customary with newly built properties in Poland.

An example of resales is a 304-square-meter semi-detached house with four bedrooms, including one in the cellar, built in 1940. It is being offered for 4.5 million zloty through Ober-Haus, a real estate agency with offices throughout Eastern Europe.

These days, villas dating to the 1920s and 1930s are rarely offered for sale in Saska Kepa. “There is a strong incentive for people with villas to hold on to them, at least until they can pass them on to their children,” said Filip Kowalski, an economist who lives in Praga, a neighborhood a couple of kilometers north of Saska Kepa. “This is obviously partly because it is easy to find reliable renters, often posted to Warsaw from abroad, and the French in particular.”

Part of the Lycée Français campus is in Saska Kepa, which makes the area particularly attractive to French expatriate families.

And, Mr. Kowalski continued, the desire to keep older villas is “also because there is a feeling that price rises may be around the corner, and the expectation is that price hikes will be particularly marked in detached, single-family homes in Saska Kepa, as they are a scarce resource.”

Yet even rentals are out of the reach of most Polish families: A renovated four-bedroom house close to the French school is being offered for 2,500 euros, or $3,440, a month through Star Properties, a Warsaw rental agency. The amount is more than twice the average pretax monthly salary of a private sector worker in the country’s Mazowieckie region, where Warsaw is located.

Not everyone in the city wants low-rise living. Among the new residential towers on the river’s left bank is Zlota 44, a 54-story luxury apartment block whose name is its street address. The developer has said that a quarter of the apartments in the 192-meter-high structure, designed by Daniel Libeskind, have been sold and all were to Poles or Polish expatriates.

Overall, Warsaw’s residential property market is oversupplied at the moment, according to a recent Knight Frank report. It says developers completed 34 percent more apartments in 2012 than in 2011 and that there will be even more finished in 2013.

Official sales records are slow to be compiled in Poland, but the report notes that asking prices have declined, falling 3.8 percent in 2012 from 2011 levels.